The gender pay gap looks like it's shrinking until you look at one really important way people get paid

The difference between men’s and women’s salaries fell to a record low last year, but the
so-called gender pay gap persists in bonuses, with men taking
home almost twice as much in extra rewards than women.

Female workers who have graduated from university within the past
five years earn an average of 17pc less than their male peers,
meaning a woman earns 83pc to every £1 pocketed by a man,
according to an analysis of more than 49,000 wages by the salary
benchmarking website Emolument.

This pay discrepancy drops to 13pc for employees within five year
of completing their MBA, who tend to be older and further along
in their careers than university graduates, with the average
woman earning £74,700 to a man’s £86,800.

However, men in this category are awarded bonuses almost twice as
high as those handed to women, taking £50,000 to an average
woman’s £27,000. This means that female MBA graduates take home a
total pay packet that is just three quarters of what their male
peers earn.

While full-time working women in their 20s and 30s earn more than
men of the same age -- although the average difference is less
than one percentage point -- the wage difference in the private
sector rises to 17.5pc.

While the average professional woman with zero to five years of
post-university experience earns £34,000 to a man’s £41,000, the
discrepancy rises to 19pc for Cambridge graduates (£46,900
compared to £57,700) and 21pc for alumni of University College
London (£37,500 against £45,500).

However, the gender pay gaps for recent graduates of Oxford
University, Imperial College and London School of Economics –
where the salaries are higher than Cambridge and UCL alumni – are
below average at 14pc, 11pc and 3pc respectively.

Emolument crowdsources market data by allowing users to enter
their own pay details and benchmark their salaries against other
workers from similar educational and professional backgrounds.